Job Freeze Cited as Chicago Delays Opening of Schools

The Chicago Board of Education last week postponed the opening of
school for the city's 411,000 students until Sept. 14, saying that a
new hiring freeze imposed by the state had made it impossible to fill
critical vacancies.

Gov. Jim Edgar and leaders of the Illinois legislature, meanwhile,
met again in Springfield to address the funding crisis that has left
the school system without a balanced budget.

They were expected to consider a plan proposed by Mayor Richard M.
Daley, as well as a pilot voucher program for Chicago parents proposed
by the president of the Senate.

In a special session on Sept. 2, the legislature voted to waive a
requirement that the district's budget be balanced. The waiver was
intended to allow the school year to start as scheduled on Sept. 8.
(See Education Week, Sept. 8, 1993.)

But lawmakers also imposed a freeze on district hiring--a
restriction that General Superintendent Argie K. Johnson said made it
impossible to fill more than 7,000 job vacancies that exist throughout
the system.

"I cannot allow children into schools where many classrooms will not
have teachers, where safety and security personnel will be inadequate,
and where meals will not be delivered on time,'' Ms. Johnson said last
week in announcing the postponement of the first day of school.

The school system also risked violating a federal consent decree,
she said, because of the number of vacancies in special-education
positions.

About 2,600 of the system's vacancies resulted from employees taking
advantage of a state early-retirement option. In addition, the Chicago
Teachers Union estimates that at any one time some 3,800 teaching
positions are being filled by full-time substitutes.

'See Who Blinks'

Illinois lawmakers have repeatedly said they were waiting for the
school board and the teachers' union to agree on a new contract before
the legislature addresses the district's financial crisis.

But last week, the union's 675-member House of Delegates unanimously
rejected a final settlement proposed by the board's negotiators.

"What we have here is a situation where we're saying we can't
bargain without knowing what the legislature will do, and the
legislature saying it will not do anything without a tentative
agreement to look at,'' said Gail Purkey, a spokeswoman for the union.
"It's a see-who-blinks posture.''

The two parties returned to the bargaining table late last week, but
made no progress. They do not even agree on what the board's final
offer was. The board says it offered to give teachers the raises they
would have earned by advancing on the existing salary schedule, while
the union insists that the board proposed a two-year salary freeze.

The two-year contract offer was a "bitter disappointment'' to
teachers, Jacqueline B. Vaughn, the president of the union, wrote in a
letter to the school board president, D. Sharon Grant.

The union had tentatively agreed to about $40 million in concessions
sought by the board, Ms. Vaughn wrote, including lengthening the high
school teaching day and the school year and contributing to health-care
costs, as well as provisions enhancing principals' powers.

The board had been seeking about $80 million in concessions.

The union has "categorically rejected'' a salary freeze, is
"unalterably opposed'' to transferring money from the teachers' pension
fund to reduce the district's deficit, and believes it is "patently
unfair'' not to pay teachers bonuses for advanced training, the union
president wrote.

To plug the entire $298 million budget gap, Mayor Daley has proposed
that the School Finance Authority, which oversees the district's
finances, be permitted to issue bonds. But his plan also depends on
union concessions.

After the legislature gave the district a reprieve from the law
requiring a balanced budget, members of the teachers' union had agreed
they would go back to school Sept. 7 to prepare for the scheduled Sept.
8 opening. They had planned to vote that night on whether to work the
next day without a contract, but Superintendent Johnson's decision to
delay the opening made that unnecessary.

Whether the teachers will teach without a new contract is
unknown.

Some Employees Working

As the players in the drama continued to circle one another last
week, some Chicago school employees did go back to work.

Ms. Johnson said the school board would appoint acting principals,
selected by local school councils, at 108 schools where principals
accepted early retirement.

Principals also have been told which teachers have retired, so that
they can begin planning, she said.

Ms. Johnson said the system was ready to fill about 3,000 of the
4,300 teaching vacancies, and that 2,300 of those teachers had already
been approved by the schools.

She said "substantial progress'' had been made in filling the 3,000
nonteaching vacancies.

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